Twelve
by Alli-dunno
Summary: Only so much could be done in twelve hours. And those who gave up trying could only think.


_12 Hours Remain_

Fleeing was pointless.

Her mother would have none of it. Try and try as Anju did, her mother was insistent on fleeing. And flee they did, to the faraway hideout of Romani Ranch, where she and her family sat in the eerie quiet of a normally cozy house, awaiting the night to pass. And time seemed to creep by so _slowly_. As the days had passed and the "countdown" began in Clock Town, Anju felt like time had slipped through her fingers. She couldn't keep track of it and she felt that she could simply blink and miss a whole day. She hated that feeling, but hated even more the irony she felt. Just as time slowed down, she wanted it to go by faster.

The anticipation is what made it so mind numbingly painful for her. In the far corner, her senile grandmother sat hunched up in her wheelchair, her soft quilt draped over her lap and her lips curved up in a content smile as she read a book by the struggling light of a candle. To her left was her mother, her round face scrunched up in an expression of deep contemplation. Her mother sat up, her feet, still covered by thick brown boots, tapping the creaky wooden floor impatiently. Anju saw the way her mother's sweaty hands fiddled with the soft fabric of her skirts in her lap and the way her mother's eyebrows furrowed as she glanced outside.

Anju wasn't used to seeing her overly confident mother in such a state of worry. Her mother was always very assured, almost too much so, and never backed out of anything she said or ever acted afraid of anything. While it clashed with her own admittedly passive way of handling things, Anju still admired her mother's fearlessness. There was something incredibly foreign to her as she glanced at the very worried woman on the bed next to her.

She sighed.

Anju didn't know what to do anymore, but looking at her mother and her grandmother only made her feel worse. She had spent the entire past few weeks worrying about _everything_ and she felt like she couldn't worry about anything anymore. Cold hard realization slapped her in the face as she was dragged out of town by her screaming mother.

_He's not coming back. He's not coming back. He's definitely not coming back._

She thought that to herself over and over and over. If she said it enough, she would eventually believe it. She could brainwash herself into believing something she knew in her heart she didn't want to believe. And, as she said that to herself in an infinite loop, she could coax herself into a sleep where nothing mattered but what she _wanted_ to be true.

_He's not coming back. He's not coming back. He's definitely not coming back._

And if he was, she thought, what point would there be?

_11 Hours Remain _

His office was dark. Very dark.

Well. Not entirely. The light from the sky outside gave him enough light to see around him, but he wouldn't say he was fond of it. _It's rather frightening, actually._ Mayor Dotour thought to himself. He had given up on working quite some time ago, and the repeated rumbling didn't provide favorable working conditions, anyways.

Mayor Dotour was never considered a strong or brave fellow. As a matter of fact, he was the farthest thing from it. He was a coward. And he was weak and skinny and short- a slouched over man with a noticeable lack of confidence and without the ability to stand up for people or himself. He made up for such flaws with his incredible intelligence and his overall calmness. He couldn't fight or rise up to fight, but he was at least calm about it. He needed controlling, because he didn't have the will power or ability to control himself.

That's why he was sitting in his office right now, and it made him laugh dryly to himself, because it was amusing in a cynical kind of way. His outspoken wife had declared they weren't leaving. She masked it with the noble intentions of falling with the town they ran, but he could see past her blustering declaration. Madame Aroma simply wanted to stay behind with a final hope of seeing her beloved son again.

It wasn't that Dotour didn't love his son. As a matter of fact, his son was everything he couldn't be- handsome, tall, strong, confident- all the makings and potential for a bright, promising future. Dotour had been as concerned as everyone else about the catastrophe at hand. As soon as the rumors began spread, fear had crept all over him like he had sat in a bed of ants- a tickling, miserable feeling that he couldn't get rid of. His son's disappearance had only fueled that.

It became increasingly obvious to Dotour that he would probably never see his son ever again. The minute he had gone missing had been the minute his relationship with his wife had been cleaved in half. Madame Aroma was so full of hope and prayer that he would return in some kind of dramatic scene right out of a fairytale storybook, while Dotour had been practical and thought of the possibilities of a future without him. It was his way of coping- planning and thinking.

He laughed again and thought to himself what a miserable scene this would be for anyone to see. The respected mayor of Clock Town sat alone at his desk, his room dusty and unorganized and cloaked in an uncomfortable blanket of bright, fiery orange. His chair was squeaky, a cup of cold coffee sat unwanted on his desk, papers were strewn across the surface, half-written, a leaking pen laid on top of them, drowning in a pool of sticky black liquid.

There he was, stuck in an abandoned office, with no future to plan for.

And he laughed again.

_10 Hours Remain_

"All I want to do is flee!"

A muffled cry escaped his lips, fingers digging to messy red auburn hair, his normally thin, squinty eyes wide with panic and fear. Each time the bells of the clock tower tolled, he was greeted with another violent quake that knocked the belongings in his little office over, sending piles of mail flying towards the unclean wooden floors. He wanted to get up and clean them- to prepare them for delivery the next day- but each time he got up, his legs gave out, and he was sent crashing to his floor, propped up not by muscle strength but sheer determination.

Fear had twisted him into some unrecognizable being. As he looked down a mirror that had fallen from his wall, he could only see a fragment of the person he had forged for so long- a strong servant dedicated to the public. Looking back at him was a scared little boy, not that strong man he wanted to be so much. All he saw were bloodshot eyes, a ghostly white face, dried stains on his cheek, chapped lips that quivered as his emotions took control of his body.

Lost in a sea of undelivered letters and packages were his beloved mailman uniform. He could only see a glimmer of his shiny red postman hat, and he tried to reach out for it, hoping that it would give him some kind of answer, but it was soon lost as another wave of rumbling buried it further. He felt as lost as his hat in that sea of paper and wrappings.

He was a public servant. It was his lifelong dream. He wanted to help the people and be a strong, admirable young man. But on this empty night, he couldn't try anymore.

He crawled across his floor, wading through the letters he couldn't organize anymore, and found that hat. He scooped it up like a child with their favorite toy, holding it close to his chest before placing it on his head, snapping it into place.

He didn't know whether he was being noble or ridiculous. There was no schedule anymore. In the back of his mind, he knew that. So he curled up on his floor, waiting to be drowned in the letters he failed to deliver, sticking to the schedule anyways.

Even if he pretended, he could still say he was strong.

_9 Hours Remain_

He had no idea why he had even opened up shop.

Really, he could slap himself for doing such a stupid thing. It's not as if there was anyone in town to buy from him, anyways, and all of his regular customers had fled. There was literally no one in his side of town, he had checked. All he had seen were locked doors and a couple of guards patrolling the area.

His store was a shady business. "Curiosity Shop", yeah right. Even he would admit it was just a black market operation to sell off stolen goods to unsuspecting people who wandered in. Oftentimes, he ended up with people coming in just to buy back the things that had been stolen from them in the first place.

He had nothing much else to live for, he decided, leaning forward at the front desk of his store, tapping his fingers against the polished wood nervously (had this desk been stolen too? He couldn't remember.) The only company he had had run off earlier in the day. He guessed that his little buddy went off fleeing too. Fear could do some crazy things to people.

Crazy things. Like opening up shop of the night of an imminent apocalypse, it would seem.

He yawned. He was done with this lack of business. He got up and locked the door to his shop, making his way to the back room. He took off his sunglasses, throwing them on to the cot in the corner carelessly before pulling out a bottle from a cabinet. He took a big, selfish gulp of the bitter liquid- alcohol.

If he was going to get blown away with the rest of the town, he figured he might as well go out with a bang.

_8 Hours Remain_

There wasn't much else on Gorman's mind besides a small fragment of guilt and a huge empty void. He figured it was loneliness, but he wasn't entirely sure. He had lost track of sappy emotions like that some time ago. As the destruction of the world became more obvious with each sickening shake and creak, the future of Termina became much less a silly rumor and more like terrifying fact.

The day before, Gorman, a dedicated leader for a well known circus troupe, had escaped town with his little army of performers. While things had been calm, the realization that there wasn't much place to run to had been too much for his performers to handle, and everyone had split off in a frenzy of panic. Gorman had managed to get in a few last words, but the way in which he had separated from his cohorts had been sudden and shocking.

Gorman wasn't the nicest person in the world, he would admit. Bitter, nasty, snide, pessimistic, and rude were all words Gorman would gladly associate with himself. He had been furious when Madame Aroma had sadly said the performances for the festival had been canceled. He had gone off that night, abandoning his confused troupe at the inn, to drown out his sorrows over some cold milk at the bar.

All it had taken was the soft sound of a strange little boy's ocarina to rob him of the anger he was so used to clinging to. Gorman remembered the strangeness of the young boy. Quiet, stoic to some degree, but with kind blue eyes, the green-clad boy had stood on stage at the near empty bar and entertained its few guests with a slow, jazzy song while a gold fairy fluttered around him. There was something relaxing about the way the boy played his little blue ocarina, hitting each note with impressive accuracy while the dim spotlight bathed him in the color white.

What a sweet song, that "Ballad of the Wind Fish", was. Each note brought him closer to his past and each note made him remember that fateful night at the carnival when he had watched a beautiful Zora sing out that song, bathed in the same white light as that little boy, hitting each note with the same incredible accuracy, each note bouncing off the dark walls of the silent bar.

Humming that song to himself through quivering lips, Gorman could only stare at the empty racetrack before him. All he could see was stretches of emerald green and all he could take comfort in were the empty house and stables that held only small remnants of the brothers he wanted to come see one last time. He could only smell the smoky, dirty scent of his brothers' work clothes and see the unwashed dishes from the meal they hadn't cleaned up.

"So they left."

He muttered an apology quietly to the things his brothers left behind, each word becoming lost in the song he continued to hum to himself.

_7 Hours Remain_

"Brother! There's nowhere else to go!"

The eldest Gorman brother ignored his littlest brother's pleas to turn around. How could he go back when that damned moon was going to fall? There was too much else for him to live for. He wasn't going to be stopped some _moon_. Escaping was his best option. Among the galloping of the tired horse he rode and the sounds of his own intense breathing, the elder brother cursed some, with words that were lost on the only sounds he could hear.

It was weird how there was no sound anymore. Only the sounds he could make himself. That damned _moon_ had to go and ruin everything, didn't it?

"Brother! Come on! There ain't a point!"

The two brothers came to an abrupt halt, dirt flying up in a cloud around them as the horses came to a stop, neighing a thankful sound as the running ended. The eldest Gorman just got off his horse and slouched down to the ground, coughing at the dirt. The younger brother stood up, thick eyebrows furrowed.

Was running worth it?

In a moment of quiet peace, his mind wandered again.

"I wonder if he came lookin' for us, Big Bro. I said we shouldn't have run off like that." The young brother muttered, breaking the silence.

"Bull shit." The eldest Gorman said bitterly. "He left us. That's all there is to it, do I make myself clear? He….left us."

He was answered with more silence.

He couldn't do a thing to reassure himself. Had running away been the smart thing?

He gave up thinking and began humming a song to himself- the same song his other little brother loved so much.

_6 Hours Remain_

Soft snoring filled the bedroom. On any other night, Cremia would have been impossibly annoyed with her little sister's sleeping habits, but tonight she would make an exception. There was an odd sense of contentment as she snuggled with her little sister, listening to her snores and spitting out hair as Romani sprawled out like wildly. Romani had always been capable of completely destroying a made bed like some kind of twister, and she had forbid Romani from sleeping in her bed because it never ended well.

But Cremia was thankful for her little twister tonight. Romani had been confused by Cremia's sudden bout of kindness, but took it with childish glee either way. She drank her Château Romani greedily and put on her Romani Mask, proud to say that her big sister thought of her like an adult for saving the cows and milk. All night through dinner, Romani had filled the ears of Cremia and their guests' ears with her plans for the following day, like how she planned to show her new mask to her new friend with the fairy- the strange little lad dressed in green that had helped Romani save the cows and helped Cremia deliver some milk.

Cremia remembered giving him a Romani Mask too, but she had not seen him at all the next day passed. She was sad, but hopeful as well. Seeing Romani play with her new friend would have only made everything so much more painful.

Cremia's father had told her and Romani a thousand times how wonderful they were and what spitting images they were of their mother. He had died with the proud hopes of an idealistic parent, talking about what bright futures they were guaranteed.

Tears poked through the corners of Cremia's eyes. She snuggled closer to the sleeping Romani, shaking and sobbing with full force as each minute brought her closer to the truth- that their father was _wrong_. The shaking stirred little Romani, though, and she looked up, bound tightly by her sister's desperate embrace, and confused by her the squeaks her sister made while she cried.

"Sister?" Romani whispered, courteous to the guests they had in the next room.

"…" There was no answer, only sobbing. Romani felt the top of her head get wet where Cremia buried her face in her unkempt hair.

"Sister?" Romani noticed the rumbling. It had been getting bad, hadn't it? And she heard her sister mutter incomprehensible things under her quick breaths, shaking violently in spurts like the ground that shook their little ranch house.

Trying one more time, Romani tried to make her sister feel better.

"Sister? Why don't you play with me and Grasshopper tomorrow? It would be fun! You need to have fun! After you get back from Miss Anju's wedding, will you play with us? Please?"

Cremia stopped crying for a moment, listening to her sister's childish request.

"Yes. Romania. Yes." She said as more fat tears fell down her cheeks. A loud cry escaped her lips, inhuman in a way, as her body surged with more panicked crying. "Yes, Romani. I would love to play with you and your friend tomorrow."

Romani was content with her sister's promise, since she knew Cremia never broke her promises, and she went back to sleep.

"I'm so sorry."

_5 Hours Remain_

How long had the candle been out?

Oh, that's right. Her daughter had burned out the candle earlier, saying something about how they needed to go to bed or whatever. Though, it wasn't as if anyone was actually sleeping. Anju laid on the bed, clearly lost in some kind of thought, and her daughter sat at the foot of the bed wringing her hands anxiously.

Old age brought a lot of peace. She didn't used to like all the changes that came with age, but right now, she was content with it. She might have been the only person in the world unafraid of what morning would bring. She had been blessed with a long life that wasn't worth living anymore. Each minute was just another added bonus. There was something amusing, she thought, about being old enough to "see the end of the world". There was some kind of reward in that, right?

Her thin, bony hands held gently the leather bound book in her lap. By the orange glow of the moon, she continued to find peace in the old fables of a Termina long gone. Looking back at her were fantastic tales of festivals and guardian giants that helped protect the people. Her interest in such things was an enthusiastic one, and she felt it necessary to bask in the history linked to such wild stories. She was content to sit back in her chair, warm under the quilt that had been in her family for generations, reading about the beginning of the world while it ended around her.

Old age brought a sense of humor, too, it would seem.

_4 Hours Remain_

The ocean was the only thing peaceful left in the world, Lulu decided. It was the only thing she could find any kind of comfort with. While normally the kind of peaceful that Lulu used to love, it was peaceful in a way that was almost sad, perhaps even frightful. The deathly orange sky stared back at her from the ocean's smooth surface. Not even a wave crashed up against the ground near her feet. It was as if someone sucked the life out of the ocean and left nothing behind but an empty shell.

In a way, that's how Lulu felt. Empty. She could no longer sing. Even with so many days passed, her voice had been robbed of her, and she felt like the ocean could understand- the loud, vibrant, colorful life the ocean was always blessed with had been drained from it. The instant her voice disappeared, so did her color and life. She couldn't sing, she couldn't talk.

Mikau's disappearance only drained her further.

If she could no longer see Mikau and no longer speak, Lulu felt like there wasn't anything else she could with her life. Her love, her eggs, her voice and now her ocean were all gone. And if they were gone, what was next?

She could hear the voices of her other band mates screaming at her to come back inside, but Lulu didn't want to.

She would take the peace and quiet, no matter what form it came in. She wanted to be in the company of the only thing that she felt understood her. She could sit in the ocean's voiceless company while her mother's famous song brought her comfort as she thought of each rich note as it passed through her mind. Mikau knew that song too. And it made her wonder if that was the only way they could say goodbye to each other.

_3 Hours Remain_

The crying had stopped some time ago, much to the relief of every person who lived in the Goron Village. Sweet silence had been their gift after days of enduring the desperate cries of the lonely baby Goron. It was concerning, though. The baby had not stopped crying because it had been given what it wanted. The young boy had simply exhausted himself. The baby had no tears nor any energy left to cry for what it wanted.

This meant that the Goron Elder, the little baby's father, had not come back. The baby had no one left, and every citizen in Goron Village knew this. With the tragic death of the great hero Darmani, whom the elder's son admired like an older brother, and now the presumed death of their leader, the baby had been robbed of the two things he loved most.

Everyone had told the elder to stay in the relative warmth of the shrine. The piercing cold and endless blizzards that raged on outside the shelter of the shrine they hid in had already claimed many lives, including that of their respected hero. No one wanted to believe that their leader had succumbed to the impossible conditions outside as well. It was only a matter of time now before the cold took everyone else, too. They made due with the food supplies they had in the shrine and in their immediate surroundings, but no one had left the area in months. It was a lonely, isolated feeling, but everybody felt disconnected from the outside world. No one could make rhyme or reason of the endless rumbling that had haunted them through the day and night. And what was with that moon up in the sky? Or the haunting glow of deadly color that enveloped their little village?

No one knew. But as hopeless as it seemed and as the storm that had killed many of their own raged on outside without end, the young baby Goron seemed oblivious to the immediate threat surrounding him. He only remained curled up, asleep from effort exerted, mumbling tired pleas for his father and his role model to come back and make him happy again.

"Daddy….Darmi….Please…..Daddy…."

_2 Hours Remain_

Kafei could list off a good selection of traumatizing events in his recent life, but none seemed as utterly traumatizing as the empty room that stared back at him. The inn seemed less like a comforting place to rest and more like a haunted house. The earthquakes had knocked the inn's front door ajar, and belongings left behind were covering the floor.

"You….left?" Kafei looked around, hoping that if he questioned it, he would be wrong and Anju would be right there waiting for him. But no matter how many times he questioned it, he knew it was true. Anju had left.

He couldn't entirely blame her. Not by any stretch of imagination was he angry with her. Seeking refuge far away was what Kafei would want her to do.

The empty room was the saddest thing Kafei felt he had ever seen. He stepped over fallen books and broken vases. He avoided the pieces of a broken drinking glass and the stain of spilt water that it laid in, and he paid little attention to the beds that were crooked and out of place or the shelf that was only hanging on the wall by one brave nail that threatened to come loose at anytime. There was a light, teasing breeze that toyed with Kafei's purple hair, blowing some papers against the wall. The curtain rod above the window had come loose and clattered to the wall, lying in a grave of old, dusty fabric.

What caught his eye was the mask at his feet. It was a beautifully simplistic mask, silver and gold- the Moon's Mask that Anju was going to wear on their wedding day. Careful effort had been put into the details of the mask, like Anju poured all of her heart into its completion.

"So, you didn't procrastinate for once." Kafei laughed, though sadly the small fingers of his now childish body brushed across the smooth, metallic surface. Soft red eyes looked down, sparkling with some emotion he refused to acknowledge. Still holding Anju's mask in his hands, he looked down at the mannequin on the floor. Upon closer inspection, he noticed the white satin fabric, shiny and decorated with flowers and sequins in meticulous detail. Kafei bent down next to the mannequin, gently touching it and moving it from its side to its back as if he were handling a real person. The dress's neckline was modest but a bit daring, too, a full collar with a slightly plunging neckline and it seemed as if it would have been a bit form fitting. An unwanted bouquet of flowers sat next to the mannequin, as out of place among the refuse on the floor as the dress was.

He went over to the bed and curled up on it, staring still at the wedding dress and holding close to his chest the wedding mask he knew they wouldn't use. The bed still smelled like Anju- a fresh smell that came from her bathing oils- and that made him feel some kind of peace as he listened to the world go to hell around him.

Perhaps he should have come sooner. Perhaps he should have seen his parents again. Perhaps he shouldn't have left in the first place and hidden in shame because of all the misfortune he faced. Perhaps he shouldn't have felt so sorry for himself.

And then he fell asleep, smelling Anju's clean scent- all he had left of her- hoping that she was still thinking of him, too.

_1 Hour Remains_

"Link, aren't you going to play the 'Song of Time' already?" Tatl's tone was less than pleased and outright annoyed as she addressed her partner. The young boy sat on the tower in South Clock Town. It was unfinished since the workers had fled the town, but it gave him a good view of the city and of the moon. Though, he could have done without the moon's grinning or the rumbling that threatened to knock him off the tower he decided to rest on.

He held in his lap the pale blue ocarina that he had used so many times before. This three-day cycle had lasted longer then he usually allowed it to, simply because of all the things he had managed to get done. His newly acquired masks stared back at him, since he neatly laid them to redo his inventory. Keeping track of what he had done was crucial to his ultimate goal, after all.

He put the masks away sadly. Normally a quiet boy that kept his emotions in check, he hated experiencing the dreadful feeling of anticipation. Tatl wasn't helping matters with her endless pestering, but the little fairy did have a point. They only had so much time left and another area to go explore come the beginning of their next three-day cycle. Tatl had instructed him that the ocean was his new area and that he needed to hurry up, sarcastically telling him that they couldn't go to the ocean if he was blown away in some fiery storm of destruction.

He stood up, his eyes scanning the area around him and then looking up at the moon, his ocarina still in his hands, awaiting use. Tatl blinked a bit in frustration but waited for her partner to get done with his daydreaming.

Shutting his eyes and his emotions along with it, he placed the ocarina to his lips and began playing out each note to the "Song of Time". Each sad note filled the empty town square, catching the attention of the only few people left- an angry carpenter and a guard. The song was unreadable in a way, and its melancholy, mysterious notes flowed together, speaking in some kind of language only Link and Tatl could make sense of.

They would greet a new cycle together.

**A/n:** One of the reasons I love _Majora's Mask_ so much is how well it conveys a sense of hope and despair at the same time. I love the way the game draws you in. You are faced with the knowledge that every person you meet will die when the moon falls and only you can stop it. No matter how much you help someone, it will all be undone and no one remembers you. And on top of that, you can only help so many people during one three day cycle. While some considers this dark and impossibly sad, and it is, I find these things you're faced with almost immediately to be even more reason to complete the game.

I love OoT, but MM has a very special place in my heart for a myriad of reasons. In some ways, I like it better that OoT because I feel that MM makes you so much more attached to the people you're saving. By the end of the game, I feel like Link has grown as attached to Termina as he was Hyrule, because the game forces you to meet all these people and love them and then abandon them at the end of a three-day cycle.

Regardless, I wrote this story to cover the thoughts of a bunch of different people as the last night passes by. I took some liberties with some of the characters, since you don't see much of a difference from them on the last day, but whatever. It's a character analysis of sorts.

Review…please?


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